Palestinian Politics

Fatah and Hamas offer two very different strategies in their push for statehood; Fatah has adopted negotiation and the two state solution, while Hamas favours armed resistance and claims all the land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River – including land that is today Israel. After 20 years it’s clear that both strategies have failed - So where to now for Palestinian politics?

Transcript

Journalist (archival): Palestinians are still celebrating their successful bid for United Nations recognition as a non-member observer state.

Palestinian envoy: I couldn’t hold my tears from joy, because this is a historic day in the history of the Palestine question.

Journalist (archival): Tens of thousands of people are expected to attend a mass rally in the Gaza Strip today to mark the 25th anniversary of the militant Palestinian movement, Hamas.

Journalist (archival): The streets of Gaza have been decorated with the Palestinian and Hamas flags. This event is set to be a reminder that after 25 years Hamas is a force to be reckoned with.

Annabelle Quince: Fatah and Hamas, the two main Palestinian political parties, have both recently celebrated victories—Fatah with the UN vote giving Palestinians non-member observer statue at the United Nations, and Hamas via the conflict with Israel and the subsequent return of their leader to the Gaza Strip.

Hello, this is Rear Vision on RN and via the web. I’m Annabelle Quince and today we trace the rivalry between Fatah and Hamas and ask how that rivalry has affected the Palestinian people.

Fatah and Hamas have very different histories and very different approaches to gaining Palestinian statehood. Fatah, a secular party, accepts the idea of negotiation and the two-state solution, whereas Hamas, an Islamist organisation, favours armed resistance and claims all the land between the Jordon River and the Mediterranean Sea, part of which is today Israel.

Michael Bröning is the author of Political Parties in Palestine: Leadership and Thought.

Michael Bröning: Fatah and Hamas really represent two very different approaches towards realising Palestinian political ambitions. I mean, Fatah was founded in 1959 in Kuwait; actually, it was founded by Yasser Arafat himself. And it was founded as a secular, nationalist Palestinian organisation and in this capacity it has really dominated Palestinian politics for the last decades. Fatah controls, or at least dominates, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO, and it has also dominated the Palestinian National Authority since it was founded in the early ‘90s.

In contrast, Hamas really was founded in 1987 in the Gaza Strip by Ahmed Yassin, and it is a religious nationalistic organisation and it’s of course related to the Muslim Brotherhood.

These two movements really do not only have a different historical development, they also very much differ regarding their political objectives.

Journalist (archival): The PLO leader, Yasser Arafat, knew before he addressed the United Nations General Assembly overnight in Geneva that there was little chance of changing the hard-line positions of Israel and its strongest ally, the United States.

Yasser Arafat (archival): Let all hands join in defence of a historic, possibly irreplaceable opportunity to put an end to a tragedy that has lingered too long and cost thousands of lives and the destruction of hundreds of village and cities. We reach for the olive branch.

Husam Zomlot: It was a major, major strategic shift, whereby, as you mentioned, in 1988 Fatah had led the PLO and the Palestinian national movement into adopting and offering the two-state solution.

Annabelle Quince: Dr Husam Zomlot is from the Fatah Commission for International Affairs.

Husam Zomlot: In effect what Fatah was saying is that this conflict can be peacefully resolved based on the two-state solution. Now, that historic moment was not easy on a national movement that had started by defining itself as a movement that would liberate the entire historic Palestine—and that would establish one democratic state for all of its citizens, including Jews, Muslims and Christians—to come around and declare and accept a state on 22 per cent of Palestine in its historic boundaries. However, that was really in a way Fatah’s ability to compromise on the one hand and on the other hand to offer something that at the time was thought to be totally and utterly reasonable and achievable and doable.

And the main idea was that you shift from revolutionary legitimacy to international legitimacy. And therefore by allying ourselves with international law and international legitimacy the idea was the way forward after 1988 was only the diplomatic and the political arena, not the military arena, and that was a transformation. Now, as a result of that the first dialogue started not between the PLO and Israel but between the PLO and America, the United States of America, and soon after, in 1991, the US convened the Madrid peace process and then Oslo came—the Oslo peace process—in 1993, all as a result of the PLO declaration led by Fatah in 1988.

Newsreader (archival): In Washington, a handshake between Yasser Arafat and Israel’s prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, has sealed a new era of Middle East politics.

Steve Sailah, The World Today (archival): Three thousand VIPs, past presidents and diplomats listened and watched under a blue autumn sky. There were no flags, no national anthems, since the PLO isn’t yet a state. Four signatures went down on the agreement: Israeli, PLO, Russian and American. Symbolic of the new post-cold war reality, the Russian foreign minister, Andrey Kozyrev, stood beside his Israeli counterpart, Shimon Peres, and the American secretary of state, Warren Christopher, stood next to the senior PLO official heavily involved in the ground-breaking secret Norwegian negotiations with Israel, Mahmoud Abbas, who signed today’s agreement.

Michael Bröning: I would say that the key date would have been the Oslo Accords, which were signed in 1993. The Oslo Accords were signed by the PLO. Actually, Mahmoud Abbas signed the actual document. It wasn’t Yasser Arafat who signed that; it was Mahmoud Abbas, the current president. Of course Fatah controlled the PLO, so Fatah recognised the two-state solution in 1993, at least on the leadership level, because Yasser Arafat actually sent a letter to then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in which he formally and officially recognised the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security. And then three years later, in 1996, the PLO parliament also amended its charter and it cancelled all articles that called for Israel’s destruction.

And of course since then, Fatah has conducted numerous rounds of negotiations with Israel, and one of the effects of this has been that Fatah has really come to represent the Oslo accords. For many Palestinians, Fatah represents the two-state solution or at least the attempt to arrive at a two-state solution, and it represents the Oslo Accords, with all its small successes and its unfortunately rather huge failures. And this has cost Fatah quite dearly in terms of public support, because, after all, the Oslo Accords have so far not brought about a two-state solution.

Annabelle Quince: Hamas took a very different approach to the Oslo Accords?

Michael Bröning: That’s correct. Hamas has always represented the opposition to Oslo. They have branded the Oslo Accords a total sell-out of Palestinian rights and Hamas represents opposition to the status quo, opposition to negotiations. Some Hamas leaders, such as Khaled Meshaal, who’s the head of the political bureau, have recently called for a state alongside Israel, but formally Hamas still calls for what they call ‘the complete liberation of all of Palestine.’ And actually I think just yesterday Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister in the Gaza Strip, has reiterated that his movement wants to liberate every inch of Palestine.

Zaki Chehab: Khaled Meshaal only the last few days ago restated what all along the founder of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, had been saying, that no one in Palestine have the right to make any concession to the State of Israel as Arafat have done.

Annabelle Quince: Zaki Chehab is the editor of Arabs Today and the author of Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of Militants, Martyrs and Spies.

Zaki Chehab: So that’s where Hamas proves that it’s right, because Israel unfortunately has failed, Yasser Arafat has failed, Mahmoud Abbas, and they have not respected any of the commitments signed in Washington, in Cairo, in Sharm el-Sheikh, in Oslo and anywhere. So practically, the peace process with the State of Israel was a complete failure.

Mark Willacy, PM (archival): East Jerusalem may be home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, but there’s no doubting who’s in control here. From the top of a large limestone building in Salahadin Street flutters the blue and white flag of Israel. Israel captured East Jerusalem nearly 40 years ago, annexing it and declaring the city its unified capital. It’s an occupation the international community has refused to recognise.

Zaki Chehab: Israel kept controlling the lives of the Palestinians. That’s why, you know, I think the history and the experience and the practices by Israelis have proved that Hamas were right from day one.

Annabelle Quince: The Oslo Agreement led to the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority in 1994. Its charter was to negotiate a peace with Israel and to govern the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Yasser Arafat was the first elected president of Palestinian Authority and remained president until his death in 2004.

Michael Bröning: Yasser Arafat established a system that was not unlike other political systems in the region. I mean, his rule can be very well compared to the rule of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, for example. It was more of an autocratic system: nepotism, corruption was widespread. I recall that cabinet meetings, formal cabinet meetings, for instance, only took place on a very irregular basis, because Arafat was famously quoted as saying, ‘Why do we need cabinet meetings? Why does the government have to convene? If one of my ministers has a problem he can come to me and he can talk to me and we can sort it out.’

The same was happening within political parties in the 1990s. I mean, Fatah as a movement had not had a party convention until 2009 for 20 years. When they had a party convention in 2009 that was the first party convention that they had actually held in 20 years. So there was widespread stagnation, political stagnation, in the Palestinian territories, and that of course… is of course partly to blame on the leadership of Yasser Arafat. Many Palestinians will be unhappy to hear this; because of course they very much respect Arafat as a political leader, who has always kept the Palestinian issue on the political agenda. But he might have been a terrific resistance fighter, but he certainly wasn’t a good president or a good prime minister of the Palestinian Authority.

(Crowd noise)

Journalist (archival): Angry Israelis took to the streets in Hadera after the bombing, the second in a week claimed by the militant Islamic group, Hamas. Seven Israelis were killed in the earlier attack.

Annabelle Quince: Through the 1990s, as Fatah and the Palestinian Authority attempted to work with Israel, Hamas continued to resist, using an array of tactics including suicide bombings, homemade rockets, and mortar attacks. The Palestinian Authority responded by arresting Hamas supporters. Hugh Naylor is the Middle East Correspondent for The National newspaper.

Hugh Naylor: Hamas would say that one of their primary grievances with Fatah during that time is that Fatah would round up a lot of Hamas supporters and jail them, and they would accuse Fatah figures of torturing them and beating them, et cetera. So there was a lot of bad blood between the two factions that had begun back in the 1990s and there was a lot of pressure on Fatah and the PLO—Yasser Arafat at the time, who was the chairman of the PLO, the head of Fatah, and from 1996 until he died the president of the Palestinian Authority—to rein in Hamas militants and their actions.

And there’s debate over whether Arafat actually encouraged Hamas to attack Israel, to use that as sort of a lever to influence Israeli policy, or whether the Israelis sort of shot themselves metaphorically in the foot by pressuring the PLO to such an extent to crack down on Hamas that they actually weakened it—weakened Fatah and the PLO—and that Hamas was able to sort of garner more strength because of that pressure that Israel placed on the PLO.

Husam Zomlot: Well, this has been a very, very difficult journey for Fatah as the mainstream national movement, as the founders of the Palestinian new political identity, as the leaders of their political bodies. The late president Yasser Arafat has really paid a lot heavy political capital, internal political capital, to press ahead with this historic decision.

Annabelle Quince: Fatah blames Israel for its declining popularity and for the loss of support for a negotiated solution.

Husam Zomlot: We spent 20 years negotiating with Israel, urging to release political prisoners. And who are these political prisoners? I mean, some of them are MPs, members of parliament; some of them are ministers. Nothing. Absolutely total rejection. And then when Hamas was capable of abducting one soldier, Hamas was able to release 1000 Palestinian political prisoners. So what’s the message that Israel keeps sending to our people?

And when we as a national movement have been conducting negotiations and saying for the last 20-something years—since 1988, that’s almost 24 years—saying that our strategic option is negotiations, our strategic option is the political track, and then our people see on the ground that Israel is not back-rolling its occupation but expanding its occupation, expanding its settlements, cutting off Palestinian territories, fragmenting Palestinian people, imposing a draconian siege on Gaza, de-Arabising Jerusalem—people are watching what is happening in the West Bank in terms of this creeping, creeping.

I mean, if you come and visit, every other week you will notice that these colonies that absolutely are there to kill any opportunity for a two-state solution. And therefore, yes, our ability to convince our people of the meaning of peace process has been diminishing over the last few years. Time in and time out, Israel delivers the message that actually Israel is only heeding pressure, not heeding some sort of a serious political progress. This is the message that they keep sending to our people.

Michael Bröning: The growth of Hamas really reflects the decline of Fatah and the failure of Fatah to deliver its fundamental political promise to bring about a fully fledged Palestinian state through negotiations with Israel. After all, negotiations started in 1991, so that’s been more than 20 years. But the rise of Hamas also has to be seen against the background of enormous dissatisfaction of Palestinians with how Fatah ran the PNA, especially in the Arafat years. So the rise of Hamas is firstly due to the fall of Fatah and the way that Fatah governed the Palestinian Authority, and secondly it can be explained by pointing at the political failure of Fatah to come to an agreement with Israel.

And if you combine this then with the general resurgence of religion and politicised Islam in the Middle East in general, then it’s easy to see why Hamas really became rather popular in the late 1990s.

In late 2000 a second Palestinian uprising, or intifada, broke out. While it temporarily brought Fatah and Hamas closer together, it also led to the death of Palestinians and Israelis.

Hamish Robertson, AM (archival): It’s left 1800 Palestinians and more than 600 Israelis dead. And, two years after it began, there’s no end in sight to the intifada.

Michael Bröning: During the second intifada both movements at times cooperated. In the second intifada of course we have a wave of terrorist attacks in Israel and Israeli attacks on Palestinians. And at times Fatah militants and Hamas militants actually cooperated.

Mark Willacy, AM (archival): It started as a clash of stones and rubber bullets. Two years on it’s a war of suicide bombers and targeted assassinations.

(Crowd noise)

And most of the victims are civilians—Israeli and Palestinian, young and old.

Hugh Naylor: They’re still tired. They’re still physically tired from the second intifada, which was a hugely traumatic event for Palestinians—and Israelis, but for Palestinians it was hugely traumatic. And what resulted after the second intifada, the creation of the separation barriers, or separation barrier, which is… the majority of which, 80 per cent of which, is built inside the Occupied Territories, was hugely painful for Palestinians.

And this is debatable, but I think partly because of the amount of pain that was inflicted back on Palestinians because of this use of suicide bombings and stuff, because of programs like the separation barrier, et cetera, it made it politically difficult for Hamas to, I think, carry on with this campaign of suicide attacks, which, you know, haven’t happened for years now, because I think there’s an implicit recognition within the group that they’re politically counterproductive for the organisation’s image abroad and potentially harmful in terms of the sort of Israeli retaliation on everyday Palestinians.

So in that sense, I think the second intifada forced a change from Hamas in terms of strategy. And resulting from the second intifada too you saw a situation where Hamas actually tried to participate in the political establishment by running in elections, et cetera, which it hadn’t done before. So it did have a pretty big impact in the group.

Annabelle Quince: The intifada came to an end in 2005 and opened the way to elections for the Palestinian Authority.

Karen Percy, PM (archival): Still in the Middle East, and in less than a fortnight millions of Palestinians will vote in their first parliamentary elections in nine years.

Mark Willacy, PM (archival): For the first time the militant Hamas movement is contesting the Palestinian parliamentary elections. Hamas is tipped to win between a third and half the seats up for grabs, severely eroding the decades-old grip on power enjoyed by the late Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction.

Mark Colvin, PM (archival): In the Middle East, the shockwaves of the Palestinian election victory by Hamas are still being felt, with Israel a few hours ago announcing that it was going to freeze funds to the Palestinian Authority.

Hugh Naylor: It was a huge surprise. I mean, people… everyone in the west and of course many Palestinians thought that the Fatah would sort of breeze through the elections and opinion polls seemed to suggest that at the time. And when Hamas won, when they swept the parliamentary elections, it was a huge shock to the system and led obviously to a crisis in the Palestinian leadership.

Annabelle Quince: Despite international observers stating the election had been free and fair, a number of Western nations refused to accept Hamas’ victory unless Hamas accepted Israel’s right to exist.

Mark Colvin, PM (archival): The European Union has warned that it will cut, or it could cut, its huge aid payout if the new Hamas leadership threatens Israel. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a stark warning at the weekend that it would be ‘unthinkable’ for the EU to continue to fund the Palestinian Authority if Hamas did not renounce violence against Israel.

Zaki Chehab: When they won the election, the Americans and the rest of the Europe all said, ‘No, you have to recognise the State of Israel so we can recognise a Hamas-led government.’ It was a big shock that when there was a first democratic, fair election, the world refused to recognise that Hamas as a movement won the election. So unfortunately the west has double standards.

Hugh Naylor: Israel and the United States and the west created a set of conditions that made it virtually impossible for this democratically elected Islamist movement to assume the reins of power in the West Bank leadership. And that sort of fostered more ill will between Fatah and Hamas.

Mark Colvin, PM (archival): There are signs that anarchy is taking over in parts of the Palestinian Territories as the Hamas government and the Fatah movement which it defeated in the elections fight it out in the streets.

Annabelle Quince: By 2007, relations between Hamas and Fatah had completely broken down and Hamas unilaterally took control of the Gaza Strip.

Tony Eastley, AM (archival): The Islamist militant group Hamas says that since it seized control of Gaza last month, it’s steadily going about restoring law and order.

Matt Brown, AM (archival): As dusk falls over Gaza City, around four platoons from the Hamas Executive Force swing into action. They drive at breakneck speed through the streets, unrivalled masters of their domain.

Michael Bröning: Well, it’s done tremendous damage to the Palestinian cause. You are right—the Palestinian territories are factually split between the West Bank and Gaza and since then Hamas has developed into an effective party of state in the Gaza Strip and Fatah has become the party of state in the West Bank. And both control all relevant political institutions in their respective territory. This has also had the effect, by the way, that Hamas activities in the West Bank have basically come to an end and Fatah activities in the Gaza Strip have come to an end.

But what I think is important to note is that Palestinians at the moment seem to be equally unhappy with the role that both parties, movements, have played in their respective territory. So they’re disenchanted with all political movements, and there are several reasons for that. One reason of course is corruption, nepotism, autocratic tendencies; they have decreased but they’re still there. A second reason is that the Palestinian Authority, as defined in the Oslo Accords basically does not enjoy sovereignty. Any Palestinian government, be it Hamas or Fatah, has basically asked to fulfil a mission impossible because, after all, the Palestinian Authority does not control its own borders; for example, they can also not issue their own currency. So they only have very limited means as a government to provide services.

And then of course there’s on another level the problem that Hamas and Fatah have basically failed as political movements to deliver their political promise, which is to bring about a Palestinian state. I mean, they have been working on this in the case of Fatah for about 50 years, and in the case of Hamas for 30 years, but there’s still no Palestinian state. So this of course makes many Palestinians very unhappy. And then now there’s a split between not only the both political movements but even between both Palestinian territories, and this has caused tremendous concern for many Palestinians.

And there’s a recent poll from Near East Consulting from April 2012 which found 43 per cent of Palestinians believe that there is not a single Palestinian political party that works in the national interest.

Annabelle Quince: So are there other political parties in Palestine apart from Fatah and Hamas?

Michael Bröning: There’s no shortage of Palestinian political parties. There’s virtually dozens of political parties. But I would say that four are really worth mentioning, the first being the PFLP—that’s the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. It’s a radical Marxist organisation. The PLFP has always rejected the Oslo Accords, but they are quite strong in the Palestinian diaspora.

And then there’s the DFLP—it’s the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. They split from the PFLP because they had a different approach towards the use of violence; they felt that violence was legitimate, but you should focus first and foremost on diplomacy and then violence would be the Plan B.

And then there’s the Palestinian People’s Party—in short, the PPP. It’s also a Marxist organisation. It’s quite close to the Palestinian Authority actually, and they also have one Member of Parliament.

And then there’s the Palestinian National Initiative. It’s headed by Mustafa Barghouti, who also ran for president and he received 19 per cent of the vote, so that’s quite substantial. It’s a social democratic party and they advocate for democratisation of the Palestinian political system. And they’re interesting because they are really exclusively focussing on non-violent resistance.

And all these small parties, with the exception of the National Initiative are also organised in the PLO, but they play a marginal role. But it doesn’t mean that they are irrelevant, because when you look at the historical development of Palestinian politics these parties have at times played very important roles, because they have tested new positions and they’ve tested avant-garde positions, which later then have become mainstream. For example, it was the DFLP which really pushed the PLO in 1974 to accept steps towards the two-state solution. So that was a very important role that was being played by a small political faction.

So even though these parties are very small and they don’t have many members of parliament, they are important because of the political ideas that they advocate, and then other major political parties sort of adapt these ideas and make them their own.

Annabelle Quince: Palestinian politics, like all politics in the Middle East, is now being reshaped as a result of the Arab Spring.

Anne Barker, AM (archival): It all began with the death of a simple street seller in Tunisia. A year ago today, Mohamed Bouazizi had his vegetable cart confiscated by local officials. In protest, he set himself on fire and in doing so ignited not just himself, but a string of anti-government demonstrations that have transformed the Arab world.

Michael Bröning: First of all, the Arab Spring strengthened Hamas. We now have a Muslim Brother who’s the president of Egypt and in the last round of violence between Israel and the Gaza Strip, Hamas in the Gaza Strip has received an unprecedented level of support from the region. I mean the Foreign Minister of Tunisia personally went to Gaza when the fighting was going on and even the Prime Minister of Egypt personally went to Gaza when Israeli planes were still in the air. So of course that would not have happened a couple of years ago or even two years ago.

Also I would say that the Arab Spring has strengthened the Palestinian position in general. Tunisia and in Egypt we now have democratically elected governments and these democratically elected governments will have to listen much more to what their constituents want. Palestinians feel that this will strengthen their position.

Annabelle Quince: So are we likely to see any form of reconciliation between Hamas or Fatah any time soon?

Husam Zomlot: I believe that the two players are capable of becoming united. Especially in the last few months and particularly in the last few weeks after the Gaza aggression and after the UN, there is a growing sense among the Palestinians that absolutely the only way forward is to go back and form a united political system. And I think we have been hearing sufficient indicators that this is the way forward. Regrettably Egypt is a little bit busy and this might delay it a few days until the situation in Egypt hopefully will calm down and stabilise. What I try to explain is that the national mood and the public pressure now on the two parties is unprecedented to press ahead with the reconciliation agreement.

Annabelle Quince: Husam Zomlot from the Fatah Commission for International Affairs. My other guests were Michael Bröning author of Political Parties in Palestine: Leadership and Thought, Hugh Naylor, Middle East Correspondent for The National newspaper, and Zaki Chehab author of Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of Militants, Martyrs and Spies.

This week on the Rear Vision special features page, ‘Plain packaging’, the story of how governments have tried to reduce cigarette smoking through legislation. That’s at abc.net.au/radionational/rearvision, and remember we update our special features page every week.

The sound engineer is Phillip Mackellar. I’m Annabelle Quince and this is Rear Vision on RN. Thanks as always for joining us.

Guests

Dr Michael Bröning

Policy Officer with Friedrich Ebert Foundation - a German Political Foundation